Last Wednesday, IBM announced that it has figured out a way to store data on a single atom in its bid to improve ways on how we store digital information. However, researchers at Columbia University and the New York Genome Center seems to have found another revolutionary solution in storing digital information by using DNA.

Improvements in data storage are a continuous process wherein engineers and scientists are finding new ways to store information reliably, swiftly, cost efficient, and smaller. Apparently, IBM Research found a way to store information on a single atom.

By creating an atomic sized stable magnet, physicists were able to make what they call an atomic hard drive. According to Nature, the "rewritable device" was constructed using two atomic sized magnets, which is able to store just two bits of data. That may not be much, however, today's hard drive takes 100,000 atoms to store just one bit of data, obviously a huge improvement.

Though IBM's findings are fresh and revolutionary, a pair of researchers just might have put one over IBM Research. Yaniv Erlich and Dina Zielinski at Columbia University and the New York Genome Center seem to have found another method that is just as revolutionary as that of IBM's. However, instead of employing magnetic atoms, Erlich and Zielinski used another approach involving DNA.

According to the pair's study published in Science, they were able to encode a full operating system, an 1895 French Film, a scientific paper, a photo, a computer virus and an Amazon $50 gift card into DNA strands, and were able to retrieve the stored information without errors.

By employing a strategy based on codes that allow movies and data to stream across the internet, the pair managed to pack digital files in very small amounts of DNA. Accordingly, their method can pack as much as 215,000 times the amount of data in a single gram of DNA than a one terabyte hard drive, that weighs in at 150 grams.

Every storage media format eventually becomes obsolete, and it forces people to move into new formats as well as purchase new equipment capable of "reading" them. DNA however, has been around storing genetic code for eons, and it is unlikely to be obsolete far into the future.

However, there is a downside. According to the researchers, the DNA breaks down after sequencing, which means information is lost, the more it is read. The upside, however, DNA is easy to replicate. According to Erlich, he estimates it could take at least 10 years before DNA data storage goes mainstream.

Furthermore, magnetic media took years of research, development, and testing before it was viable enough to hit the mainstream. IBM's research with atomic magnets aims to extend that, while DNA storage seems to be a completely new ballpark that is worth looking seriously into.

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Topics Columbia University